Semi-Procedural Animation for Character Locomotion

Graphics and GPU Programming Programming

Started by runevision September 26, 2008 07:13 AM

8 comments, last by runevision 15 years, 7 months ago

133

Author

September 26, 2008 07:13 AM

Hi! In this thread I will post info and updates on my master thesis project "Semi-Procedural Animation for Character Locomotion" Demo-videos and interactive demos are available at http://runevision.com/blog/ Overview Here's a quick overview of what the system does: The Locomotion System automatically blends your keyframed or motion-captured walk and run cycles and then adjusts the movements of the bones in the legs to ensure that the feet step correctly on the ground. The system can adjust animations made for a specific speed and direction on a plain surface to any speed, direction, and curvature, on any surface, including arbitrary steps and slopes. The Locomotion System does not enforce any high level control scheme but rather lets you move your character around by any means you desire. The Locomotion System silently observes the position, alignment, velocity and rotational velocity of your character and deduces everything from that, along with some raycasts onto the ground.

Thesis I am currently writing the master thesis. So far, I have more or less finished a chapter on motion interpolation.

Chapter: Motion Analysis - Not written yet
Chapter: Motion Interpolation - thesis_draft_interpolation.pdf
Chapter: Motion Blending - Not written yet
Chapter: Semi-Procedural Animation - Not written yet

I'd appreciate any feedback on it you might have. (By the way, I'm not sure which forum this is most relevant in. Generally procedural animation links graphics and AI so could be placed both here, in the AI forum, or in the general game programming forum...) Rune [Edited by - runevision on September 26, 2008 7:46:46 AM]

JPulham

120

September 26, 2008 08:53 AM

This is awesome! It looks like Lucas arts endorphin. That features procedural animation (muscle based though).
I will watch this with interest :D

pushpork

runevision

133

Author

September 26, 2008 11:10 AM

Quote:Original post by JPulham
This is awesome! It looks like Lucas arts endorphin. That features procedural animation (muscle based though).
I will watch this with interest :D

Thanks!

As far as I've understood, NaturalMotion's Endorphin is not for real-time animation in games but rather a tool to assist animators while creating animations, so it's a bit difficult to compare.

The system I'm developing is all about real-time animation, and about making the tech *easy* to use set up and require only few animations, so that even indie developers can use it.

Rune

jkleinecke

251

September 26, 2008 03:02 PM

They have a real-time version called 'euphoria' that's been used in the latest GTA and Star Wars games.

-----------------------------------Indium Studios, Inc.

Sneftel

1,788

September 26, 2008 03:15 PM

Looks good. A few weird ankle twists-- you might consider overriding the foot plant when the angle between the lower leg and the foot gets above a certain threshold.

BTW, is it just me, or are the arms on that model way out of proportion to his legs?

runevision

133

Author

September 26, 2008 03:19 PM

Quote:Original post by jkleinecke
They have a real-time version called 'euphoria' that's been used in the latest GTA and Star Wars games.

Yep, that's true. However, Euphoria is only used in certain moment, for example when characters are hit, fly through a window, are grabbed by "the force" etc. Basically it's "active ragdolls" but not turned on during normal activities such as walking around. (The exception is the "drunken walk" mini-game in GTA but that's not exactly "normal" walking.)

Anyway, the point is that a comparison is a bit out of place since the system shown here is for locomotion (walking and running) while Euphoria is typically turned off during locomotion, so they're used for different things.

Mainstream hype have done a lot to spread misconceptions about what Euphoria actually does though, so many people think it's used for all the animation in the games where it's used.

Rune

tombofsoldier

133

September 26, 2008 03:22 PM

Edit - Oops, once again someone said what I was going to saw while I was writing my post.

runevision

133

Author

September 26, 2008 03:29 PM

Quote:Original post by Sneftel
Looks good. A few weird ankle twists-- you might consider overriding the foot plant when the angle between the lower leg and the foot gets above a certain threshold.

Thanks for spotting, and it's a good suggestion. At which times mm:ss in the video can these ankle twists be seen? (I may have gotten a bit blind towards spotting such things after having worked on this system for so long...)

Quote:BTW, is it just me, or are the arms on that model way out of proportion to his legs?

I've never noticed it (nor have anyone else mentioned it), but you may be right! I can't do much about it though; I didn't create it myself.

Rune

Sneftel

1,788

September 27, 2008 06:09 AM

Quote:Original post by runevision
Quote:Original post by Sneftel
Looks good. A few weird ankle twists-- you might consider overriding the foot plant when the angle between the lower leg and the foot gets above a certain threshold.
Thanks for spotting, and it's a good suggestion. At which times mm:ss in the video can these ankle twists be seen? (I may have gotten a bit blind towards spotting such things after having worked on this system for so long...

Hm... I noticed it when walking around (with many turns) on the blocks and ramps example, not in the video. Looking over the vid now, I can't find any examples. It could be that it's a thing which only really come into play with lots of turns and/or in the blocks situation. Sorry I can't be more precise. :-/

runevision

133

Author

September 27, 2008 07:06 AM

Quote:Original post by Sneftel
Hm... I noticed [a few weird ankle twists] when walking around (with many turns) on the blocks and ramps example, not in the video. Looking over the vid now, I can't find any examples.

Okay, thanks. I'll look out for it. :)

Rune

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